To hear oil and gas industry folks tell it, in the last three years drilling on public lands has been choked off by cumbersome new rules and bureaucratic red tape from the Obama administration.

Conservation groups, on the other hand, say the last three years represent a rebalancing of variety of public interests, after a frenzy of leasing and drilling approvals in the final months of the Bush administration that led to a volley of legal challenges.

Both sides have statistics to back up their claims. The Western Energy Alliance, an oil industry trade group, points to a 39 percent decline in drilling permit approvals since 2008. The Wilderness Society counters that oil and gas production is up on federal lands.

The fact that the two sides can rummage through the data, collected by the federal Bureau of Land Management, and come to different conclusions is a testament to the power of advocacy and the suppleness of numbers.

So what is really happening on the plains, mesas, deserts and forests of the West? Just as the numbers seem to swing from side to side the truth doesn’t reside in a single place.Read more…

Emilie Rusch covers retail and commercial real estate for The Post. A Wisconsin native and Mizzou graduate, she moved to Colorado in 2012. Before that, she worked at a small daily newspaper in South Dakota. It's the one with Mount Rushmore.